A communication network may include network elements that route packets through the network. Some network elements may include a distributed architecture, wherein packet processing may be distributed among several subsystems of the network element (e.g., line cards).
Service Operation, Administration, and Management (“Service OAM” or “SOAM”), is defined by IEEE 802.1ag and defines Maintenance Entity Group End Points (MEPs) that may be provisioned on a network element. A MEP may be associated with a particular maintenance level (e.g., 0 to 7) and may be configured to communicate management traffic, for example continuity check messages (CCMs), to a peer MEP at the same maintenance level that resides in the communication network. CCMs may be periodically communicated between MEPs at the same maintenance level, and a service is considered down if a MEP does not receive a CCM from its peer MEP within a certain time.
The ITU Y.1731 standard complements IEEE 802.1ag by allowing a MEP to transmit a Ethernet Alarm Indication Suppression (Eth-AIS) messages in a network direction away from where its peer MEP is located (e.g., in an upstream direction). Such Eth-AIS messages allow for alarms to be suppressed when received by a MEP. Traditionally, Eth-AIS messages can be communicated from a source MEP to a higher maintenance level MEP upstream of the source MEP if the source MEP has been provisioned with information regarding the higher maintenance level MEP (e.g., a Media Access Control (MAC) address or other unique identifier for the higher maintenance level MEP). However, such provisioning is typically performed manually, leading to configuration complexity for an administrator of the communication network.